“Metacognitive Peer Review in the Tech Writing Classroom”
Leticia French-Slabaugh
SCMLA, I believe.
I took notes rather than live blogging and it has taken me this long to find the notes again and post them.
part of the process is revising and peer reviews
getting quality peer reviews is difficult
discuss quality feedback
Why? Help everyone make an A.
People will make decisions based on your writing and feedback helps create good writing.
Spend time getting students to buy into it.
They need to see themselves as having the ability to give feedback.
They are concerned about their own writing quality and experience.
What does good feedback look, sound, and feel like?
Prime them.
“This sucks” is not useful. Explain why not.
“This is good.” “I don’t see anything that needs to be changed.” These are not useful. Students have to say WHY it is good, so the writer can do even better.
Give specific information and reasoning.
“Because inside address should be recipient’s, your addresses need to be flipped.”
Then they work.
Have students post drafts.
Everybody peer reviews the 3 that are under theirs.
Don’t let them do Track Changes. Just Insert Comments.
The student needs to determine whether suggestions are correct. Insert Comments makes them think this through.
So students draft. Then they get 3 or 4 peer reviews.
Then they review those.
Which was the most helpful? Least helpful?
Then I gather the results, compile it, and publish it back to the students.
I don’t publish these back to that class–but to a different class. That way they don’t see theirs up there as least useful.
At the end of the semester 1 or 2 mention that they are glad we did peer reviews and that they got useful information.
It DOES improve their writing.